When it comes to the Second Amendment, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has long-been out of sync with its mission “to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States.”

An op-ed written by ACLU senior policy advocate Harold Jones, and published in the Pittsburg Post-Gazette, shows just how out of sync they really are.

Written in response to the “emerging national debate” about having armed persons in place to protect our students, including calls to arm police in schools around the City of Pittsburgh, Mr. Jordan argues that the real debate “is not about whether school police should be armed but about how best to improve school environments and ensure student success while minimizing unnecessary student arrests.” 

While there is no doubt that students' chances of success are diminished when in an active killer attacks and no-one is around who can protect them, Mr. Jordan doesn't think that having armed persons in place to immediately respond is a good idea. He thinks it'll somehow improve the school environment to continue to allow the killing to continue until other armed persons – sometimes ten or more minutes away – can arrive and stop the attack. Don't believe me?

Unarmed school staff does not mean that schools are defenseless in emergency situations. School districts have arrangements, formal or informal, with local law enforcement in which outside assistance is provided when needed in emergencies, such as when there is a bomb threat or serious injury.

The logical conclusion of Mr. Jordan's argument is that it's worth the extra lives lost waiting for other armed help to arrive in order to prop up some false notion of school building utopia.

Mr. Jordan opines that “the most immediate impact of arming school police would be felt by students,” and that “having officers patrol the hallways with firearms sends a negative message to students.” 

We definitely wouldn't want to send a message that our students are at least as important to us as our rock stars and politicians, now would we?

Mr. Jordan continues:

There is no evidence that arming school officers increases overall safety or improves relationships within school communities. Having an armed officer stationed in schools has neither prevented nor stopped “active shooter” incidents. It did not at Columbine High School nor has it elsewhere.

I beg to differ.

In the Columbine attack, the armed officers were outside the building when the attack occurred, and had been trained not to enter back into the building during an attack until a heavy police presence had time to arrive. That out-moded and life-costing training is no longer in effect.

Furthermore, there are numerous examples of armed persons stopping active killers at schools. Pearl High School (1997). Appalacian Law School (2002). Sullivan Central High School (2010). Arapahoe High School (2013).  Madison Jr./Sr. High School (2016). The Ohio State University (2016). Those are just the ones that come readily to mind.

While this editorial exposes the continued and complete failure of the ACLU to follow-through on its own mission statement when it comes to the Second Amendment, I remain encouraged. It is good to hear that the City of Pittsburgh is investigating ways to ensure that they are able to provide protection to their students as quickly as possible, rather than waiting for outside help to arrive.

More than 773 school teachers and staff members from 194 districts in 8 states have been trained to protect their students through Buckeye Firearms Foundation's FASTER Saves Lives program. This includes teachers and staff in 74 of Ohio's 88 counties. 

Teachers from Pittsburgh who have the desire to protect their kids are welcome to join them. And you can help make their training possible by donating to Buckeye Firearms Foundation!

Chad D. Baus is the Buckeye Firearms Association Secretary, BFA PAC Vice Chairman, and an NRA-certified firearms instructor. He is the editor of BuckeyeFirearms.org, which received the Outdoor Writers of Ohio 2013 Supporting Member Award for Best Website.

Trauma Medicine for Active Killer Events

Objective: Casualty Care

• To identify potential wound patterns and injuries in an trauma emergency such as active killer event, severe weather event, car/bus/kitchen/lab accident, or severe sports injuries.
• Provide necessary skills to recognize and rapidly treat life threatening injuries even in a hostile environment
  

Reality Check . . .

– There WILL be a potentially extended period of time where wounded survivors are on their own, suffering from life threatening injuries!
– We can intervene and STOP the death toll with simple, effective, and rapid treatment
– Self-Aid/Buddy-Aid techniques will buy critical time and save lives.

Location: Premier Shooting and Training West Chester Ohio

Date: April 1 

Continue reading

[Recently] I wrote an article describing how school shooters have recently been utilizing the chaotic time periods immediately before or after school as well as busy lunch periods and fire drills to launch their shooting attacks. This trend is growing. Almost half of the school active killer attacks in the last three years have been outside of normal school hours. All of the other school attacks occurred during lunch periods or school recesses. The school’s well practiced classroom lockdown drills are not enough to protect our children from killers whose tactics are constantly evolving.

After writing the article, I got quite a few emails complaining that I did not provide any solutions to the identified problems. This article will remedy those complaints. Here are some strategies that schools can implement to better respond to the latest threats targeting students in the time period immediately before or after school.

1) School staff manning every door before school starts. Teachers and administrators should be stationed at all doors before classes begin. Even doors which usually remain locked should be manned by school staff to prevent one student on the inside opening a locked and unauthorized door for a friend on the outside.

The school staff should be greeting students and evaluating threats. They should be taking a look at the items that students are bringing inside. Overly large duffel bags capable of carrying shoulder fired weapons, restraints, or explosives should be given greater scrutiny. The staff should also be talking with the incoming students in an attempt to identify any obvious behavioral issues.

In a short period of time, teachers will come to know which children come through “their door” and at what time. Teachers will be able to identify and report activities outside the norm. This visible presence may even deter some killers from attempting to smuggle weapons or explosives into the school.

All staff members manning doors should be in radio communication with one another and should have a key to lock the individual door they are guarding. In the event an incident happens in another part of the school, the teachers should escort students outside and away from the shooter as they lock the exterior door to prevent students from accidentally walking into the school attack.

If teachers are busy doing other tasks before class, the “door guards” could theoretically be trained volunteer parents or grandparents (after passing a background check).

2) Armed security, police, or armed teachers actively patrolling areas where students gather before and after school. If the school has armed staff, they should be stationed in any areas with large student populations before and after school. Police officers assigned to the school usually patrol the parking lot before the school day starts. That isn’t the best location for them to be working. They should be constantly moving in a random and unpredictable pattern wherever students are gathering socially before classes.

The random moving patrol is important. It prevents the officers from being intentionally targeted by the killer in the moments prior to the attack, and creates a deterrent effect when students don’t know when they are going to encounter the police officer or armed security guard. Random moving patrols of high traffic areas are likely to eliminate many possible attack strategies. School killers want a high body count. They don’t want an immediate gunfight with a cop or armed security guard. If the chance of being engaged by a patrolling cop is greater than average, the killer may choose not to conduct the attack.

3) No backpacks or coats during the school day. This doesn’t specifically deal with attacks before or after school, but is a good general practice for schools to follow. Students arriving to school wearing coats or carrying backpacks should be required to immediately go to their lockers and secure those items for the duration of the school day. In virtually every previous school attack, the killers have smuggled their guns into and around the school hidden under heavy clothing or in duffel bags or backpacks. By prohibiting the carrying of these items, you make it harder for the spree killer to move to an attack location without being detected.

4) Better evacuation plans for large areas like school lunch rooms. Lockdown is the standardized response to a school shooting. Lockdown is a good choice for some situations and a poor choice for others. Locking down a school lunchroom while the killer is already inside is senseless. When a lunchtime attack happens, students should be evacuating the room as quickly as possible through an exit that takes them away from the killer, not hiding under lunch tables.

All school lunch rooms should have multiple exits. There should be several staff members (armed if possible) assigned to the lunch room. In the event of an attack, those staff members should be either engaging the killer or working to quickly evacuate the room and prevent the killer from getting access to another part of the school. Lunch room doors should be propped open in a locked condition while students are present. Staff can immediately close and lock the doors in the event of an attack in another part of the building or quickly evacuate the room if the attack happens during the lunch period.

If a police officer is assigned to the school, he should be actively patrolling lunch rooms throughout the normal school lunch periods.

5) Scheduling evacuation/lockdown drills for non-traditional times. I mentioned this issue in last week’s article. Most schools only do a few lockdown/evacuation drills a year and never schedule them for transitional time periods immediately before or after school. That needs to change. At least two or more drills should be conducted for transitional times every year. Scheduling one drill before classes begin and one drill immediately when classes let out each year would be ideal.

6) Police response to all fire alarms and drills. In prior school attacks, killers have pulled fire alarms to bring large numbers of students into predicable locations. The killers pull the alarms and then shoot the students outside in the evacuation spot. It’s easier to do that than to smuggle a gun inside the school. In one attack last year, the killer used a scheduled fire drill to accomplish the same goal, shooting students at the drill’s evacuation site.

In addition to these issues, many people are training to evacuate public areas by pulling a fire alarm during a school shooting. (This is a bad idea, by the way.) School administrators should work with police command staff to ensure that officers are immediately dispatched to the school any time a fire alarm goes off or a drill is scheduled. Getting armed help to the scene as quickly as possible ensures a smaller number of fatalities.

With killers using fire alarms as often as they have in the past, there should already be a policy in place to dispatch the police to all public building fire alarms. Unfortunately, this is seldom the case. Even my agency refuses to dispatch officers to fire alarms, despite the fact that I’ve briefed command staff on the issue. Old habits are hard to change. Overcoming institutional momentum is often difficult. Most agencies don’t send the police to school fire alarms. That needs to change.

If you are a parent, talk to your child’s school teachers and administrators. Show them the data about when school shootings are most likely to occur. Encourage them to have a plan in place to counter a school killer who plans his attack to occur during transitional periods or outside of normal school hours.

Greg Ellifritz is the full time firearms and defensive tactics training officer for a central Ohio police department. He holds instructor or master instructor certifications in more than 75 different weapon systems, defensive tactics programs and police specialty areas. Greg has a master's degree in Public Policy and Management and is an instructor for both the Ohio Peace Officer's Training Academy and the Tactical Defense Institute.

For more information or to contact Greg, visit his training site at Active Response Training.

by Greg Ellifritz

Last [month] we had another school shooting.  When I read that the West Liberty High School shooter chose to initiate his attack before classes officially began for the day, it got me thinking.  It seemed that a lot of recent school attacks have been happening not during the school day, but rather before or after school.  When I linked to the story about the shooting on my Facebook page, I casually commented that I was noticing a lot of shootings before school actually began.

That comment generated an email from the brilliant LouAnn Hamblin of Louka Tactical.  LouAnn wanted to know if I had seen any hardcore data on the topic of the timing of school shootings.  I have not seen any studies, so I decided to take a look at things on my own.

I went to Wikipedia’s constantly updated list of school shootings in the United States.  As I wanted to look at the most recent trends, I analyzed the reported shootings from the three-year period ending December 31, 2016.  Over that three-year period, there were 71 school shootings listed.

As I was primarily interested in elementary school and secondary school shootings, I excluded the shootings that occurred on college campuses.  That left me with 47 shootings to look at.

Of those 47 shootings, the majority were incidents that consisted of fights between two individuals where one suspect shot another.  They weren’t random shootings with multiple victims.  I excluded all the incidents of individual combat and was left with 16 school shootings to analyze.

Of the 16 remaining school shootings, 10 happened after school, four happened during school hours, and two happened before classes began.  Nine of the 10 after-school shootings were gang related and many were drive by shootings by gang members that occurred after sporting events let out.   I wasn’t interested in those shootings either.

When I excluded the gang retaliation shootings and drive-byes, that left me with a grand total of seven school shootings where multiple victims were randomly shot by a single suspect.  That number honestly surprised me.  Seven mass school shootings over a three year period in a nation of over 300 million people is actually a lot fewer than I expected.

Looking at the seven mass school shootings that fit a traditional definition of an active killer attack, we see that four attacks occurred during school hours, one was after school (during a prom), and two happened before school hours.

So, three of the seven (43%) shootings occurred outside of the time period of normal school hours.  That’s actually a big percentage.  Why is that number important?

No schools practice lockdown/escape drills at that time. Staff isn’t all present. Students aren’t in their classrooms. People are hanging out in hallways. An organized lockdown is very difficult at this time. That’s why shooters pick this time to attack. Schools need to practice drills before classes (and after classes) to be fully prepared.

Let’s take a deeper look into these eight school shootings.

• An Oregon school shooting happened when students were walking to their first period class (before school).
• A New Mexico school shooting happened before school as well
• The after-school shooting happened in Wisconsin.  A student set up with a rifle in the school parking lot and shot students leaving the high school prom.
• An eighth grader shot students during a school lunch period.
• A 15-year old shot five students during a school lunch period.
• A South Carolina teen targeted elementary school children playing on a playground during recess.
• A Student fired five shots during a scheduled high school fire drill.

What can we learn from these shootings?

The most obvious fact is that NONE of the shootings took place in a classroom during school hours!  Some of the attacks happened outside of school hours.  Of the attacks that occurred during the school day, ALL happened in locations other than classrooms.  Two shootings happened during school lunch periods.  One was during a fire drill.  The other happened during an elementary school recess.

I think that tells us that school security measures are working.  Kids know that they will be caught if they carry guns into the school, especially into the classroom.  They depend on the natural chaos that occurs during lunch periods or fire drills to mask their intentions to kill other students.

The problem is that schools are preparing for the last threat.  They are training to lock down classrooms in response to a school shooting.  But the classrooms aren’t where the shooters are operating!  Schools need to take the next step to secure their “public” areas (like lunch rooms) and train to respond to attacks either before or after school hours.

Talk to your kids’ school administrators. Ask them what plans they have in place for an attack before classes begin. Ask them how they would keep a large lunch room full of students safe from an active killer.   Don’t be surprised if they don’t have an acceptable answer.  Encourage them to expand their policies and training drills.

Greg Ellifritz is the full time firearms and defensive tactics training officer for a central Ohio police department. He holds instructor or master instructor certifications in more than 75 different weapon systems, defensive tactics programs and police specialty areas. Greg has a master's degree in Public Policy and Management and is an instructor for both the Ohio Peace Officer's Training Academy and the Tactical Defense Institute.

For more information or to contact Greg, visit his training site at Active Response Training.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) gets it, the U.S. military gets it, police are starting to get it does your school get it? “IT” is the fact that simple tools and training can save lives by treating the most preventable causes of death seen in traumatic or other violent injuries. These injuries occur in severe weather emergencies, kitchen/lab accidents, severe sports injuries, car/bus accidents both in and out of school.

From the DHS website ( Stop the Bleed )
No matter how rapid the arrival of professional emergency responders, bystanders will always be first on the scene. A person who is bleeding can die from blood loss within five minutes, therefore it is important to quickly stop the blood loss.

“Stop the Bleed” is a nationwide campaign to empower individuals to act quickly and save lives.

In 2014, the Buckeye Firearms Foundation started a campaign to put trauma kits in every school, just like we do with fire extinguishers and AED devices. We customized a ‘Classroom Emergency Response Kit’ containing tourniquets, compression bandages, chest seals and other supplies to treat the most common traumatic injuries.

When an active killer targets a school, the standard protocol is to wait for law enforcement to arrive on the scene to stop the violence.

In 2013, that protocol started to change for many schools with the introduction of the FASTER Saves Lives program, which provides lethal force training and medical response to teachers and staff members.

Now after four years, FASTER Saves Lives has trained 773 school teachers and staff members from 194 districts in 8 states. This includes teachers and staff in 74 of Ohio's 88 counties.

FASTER stands for Faculty / Administrator Safety Training & Emergency Response.

Created by concerned parents, law enforcement, and nationally-recognized safety and medical experts, FASTER is a groundbreaking, nonprofit program that gives educators practical violence response training.

The program offers a carefully-structured curriculum offering over 26 hours of hands-on training over a 3-day class that exceeds the requirements of the Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy.

The purpose is not to replace police and EMT, but to allow teachers, administrators, and other personnel on-site to stop school violence rapidly and render medical aid immediately. 

To date, the non-profit Buckeye Firearms Foundation has provided over $500,000 to fund this program.

According to program director Joe Eaton, the training has quickly gone from a radical idea to a widely accepted concept. “In 2016, we saw unprecedented support not only from school districts but also from county sheriffs across Ohio,” Eaton said.

“As one example, a sheriff worked to get the last 4 districts in his county authorized and trained. We used the sheriff's range and the school buildings to conduct the classes. It was truly awesome seeing the entire community come together to put school safety first!”

2016 also saw many firsts for FASTER. The program started offering independent trauma medical training, hosted the first law-enforcement only class to Ohio police officers, and worked with an Eagle Scout who wanted to put trauma kits in every classroom in his home district for his scout project.

“We expect 2017 to be another year of growth,” continued Eaton. “With the passage of SB199, we expect many universities to now join the FASTER program. We will also host our first FASTER Saves Lives for businesses, churches and the public as a fundraiser for Buckeye Firearms Foundation.” 

Joe Eaton is the FASTER Saves Lives Program Director.

Editor’s Note: The following article was submitted to WalletHub.com in response to their request for comments for an article they published entitled Should Teachers Be Armed? Experts Pick Sides. The article also features comments from Dr. John R. Lott and Ohio’s own Ron Borsch, among others.

From the times of ancient yore when kings used guards to protect their castles, to our political leaders and celebrities today, we understand the need to protect people and things of value. For the most valuable assets, we employ armed security.

Nothing is more important or valuable than our children. They are the future for everything mankind has ever accomplished.

Over the past 50 years it has become increasingly common to target children, not just in war, but in terrorism and mass killings. Killing children is easier, allowing for higher death tolls (fame) and elicits strong emotional reaction.

When we fail at something, we find success by trying again with a different strategy. Examples abound in science, manufacturing, sports and any number of endeavors. Looking specifically at active killer response we see that law-enforcement and medical experts have made drastic changes to their policies. The outlier is our educational system where failed ideas have been repeated ad nauseam, while our children die.

If learning can be defined as a change in behavior, then why are our enlightened the last to learn?

Many lament that “guns don’t belong in schools.” Maybe not. But reality is a harsh mistress. Children should not get cancer either. But they do. Failure to address the problem only results in more loss of life.

Some kids need chemo. Some need armed protection. The fact that both are “rare” events is of little comfort when yours is the child in need. We can wait for a cancer diagnosis to begin treatment, but waiting till you need armed protection is like putting a seatbelt on a traffic fatality.

There is not really concern about guns in schools. Everyone knows police carry guns and should be summoned for killing events. Home invasion or active killer, we need our police and we need them fast.

The real concern is training. What people are uncomfortable with are untrained people carrying guns around our kids. Through the FASTER Saves Lives © program, we provide training to those individuals pre-selected by school boards to respond to violence. That does not mean the gun is the answer to all violence; it’s not. But it does mean that when it’s needed, there are trained, armed individuals who can end the violence faster than you will dial 911.

The class was designed by John Benner of Tactical Defense Institute. His knowledge, expertise and experience are unmatched. As Benner notes, “I realized I was training the wrong people. It’s not the cops I needed to train; it’s the educators. They are the ones in the building when the killing starts.”

In our 5th year, we have a proven program that works with any school. We are proud to be working with our nations experts in law enforcement and education to set the standard for what school safety and security are becoming. It’s time our educators discard failed ideals and employ armed staff to protect our children. They are worthy of it.

Jim Irvine, Director
FASTER Saves Lives

The Bucyrus Telegraph-Forum is reporting on the growing trend of school districts around Ohio that have authorized teachers and school staff members to carry concealed firearms in classrooms.

From the article:

The next time a person is shot in an Ohio school, it could be at the hands of a teacher allowed to carry a gun.

In a trend that has grown rapidly since the late 2012 school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, an increasing number of school districts around Ohio have authorized teachers and school staff members to carry concealed firearms in classrooms.

But which schools allow armed teachers, or which teachers volunteer to be armed, across Ohio is not known. Details of the policies are legally allowed to be secret and some districts do little to let the public know such a policy has even been enacted. But expert estimates put the number of districts arming staff members at more than 175, or more than one in four districts in the state.

The article goes on to quote from David Hire, superintendent of Coshocton City Schools, who hopes to have armed staff members in his schools by year end:

“Five years ago we probably wouldn’t have considered it, and even three or two years ago I would still have been saying this is not the direction we want to go, but we’re living in a society where this is becoming almost weekly or every other week where there is some event somewhere around the country.”

Hire said he also got the support of the Coshocton County Sheriff’s Office before moving ahead with a concealed-carry policy.

The article notes that districts have long been allowed by state law to authorize specific staff members such as teachers, custodians or administrators to carry concealed weapons. Few, if any, districts were known to have done so — until the December 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, when 20 children and six adults were fatally shot by a gunman in Connecticut.

Following that incident, the Columbus-based Buckeye Firearms Association, which advocates for gun ownership and fewer gun control laws, began more actively promoting the arming of school staff, along with spearheading a training program for school employees who want to carry concealed firearms in schools. The West Union-based Tactical Defense Institute, funded by the Buckeye Firearms Foundation, said that it has trained staff members from 175 districts around the state to carry concealed firearms.

As more schools have adopted such measures, district administrators have begun to get more comfortable with the notion of arming school staff, said Hire, who estimates as many as 200 districts in the state have adopted the firearms measures. Hire said he expects that number to continue to grow.

“It has always been the thinking that we don’t need to go in this direction,” Hire said. “But I said I’m so impressed with the quality of the training and what they are learning that I think this is something we need to talk about.”

Training is crucial for armed staff members to be effective, said Joe Eaton, program director for Buckeye Firearms Foundation's FASTER SAves Lives Program.

“All you have to have is a concealed handgun license and permission from the school board,” he is quoted as saying. “But most schools realize that getting additional specialized training on these kind of events is necessary.”

The article notes that there is no official list of which Ohio schools allow school staff to carry concealed weapons.

School districts are required to adopt policies in public school board meetings, but Ohio law gives districts the ability to keep much about arming staff members secret because school security plans aren’t public. That can lead to some schools disclosing their approach, and others staying mum.

The Zanesville City Schools District for example, adopted a concealed firearms policy in a public meeting in June, but at East Muskingum Local Schools, the neighboring district to the east, parents and students are kept in the dark on whether staff members are carrying guns or not.

“As protected by the law, school safety plans are not public record,” Superintendent Jill Sheridan said in an email inquiring as to whether the school district has adopted a policy to arm its staff.

The article notes that some schools pay the salaries of resource officers, but that arming staff members is usually a much cheaper route as existing employees are already being paid to perform their normal duties and typically purchase their own firearms.

Dick Caster, the school safety and security consultant for the Ohio School Boards Association, is quoted as saying arming school staff members is a decision each district has to make based on its own needs and circumstances.

Chad D. Baus is the Buckeye Firearms Association Secretary, BFA PAC Vice Chairman, and an NRA-certified firearms instructor. He is the editor of BuckeyeFirearms.org, which received the Outdoor Writers of Ohio 2013 Supporting Member Award for Best Website.

It has been well over two years since we called for a trauma kit in every school building. At first only a few schools took the call seriously, but over the past year we have seen a steady increase in interest in both the supplies, and the training to use them. This year several districts have held trauma classes for staff.

The class we offer is a three hour class. It is a distilled class taking the highlights from TCCC (“T triple C”). TCCC stands for Tactical Combat Casualty Care. It was developed by the military to reduce battlefield deaths in the global war on terror. Units trained saw significant reductions in death and special ops units where every member is trained in TCCC have seen reductions never seen before in war.

TEMS (Tactical Emergency Medical Support) evolved along special operations law enforcement (SWAT) on the civilian side. It has identical objectives to TCCC.

The driving force behind TCCC/TEMS is that there is a delay between injury and advanced medical care. Help is simply not on scene when the injury happens and help is needed. Immediate care is needed to sustain life until a transfer to higher medical care can be accomplished. Just as an AED is used to preserve the life of a heart attack victim, trauma care preserves the live of a trauma victim until help arrives.

Class objectives are to train participants to treat preventable deaths. These include extremity hemorrhage (bleeding from arms/legs), junctional hemorrhage (bleeding from shoulder/pelvis), tension pneumothorax (collapsed lung) and airway obstruction.

Most bleeding, even gunshot wounds can be stopped with direct pressure. A problem arises when there are multiple injured and there is not enough time or hands to apply the pressure needed to stop bleeding. What is needed is a way to stop all bleeding quickly allowing the care giver to move on to other casualties. Any extremity injury with significant blood loss (generally pressurized/spurting or pooling) should be treated with a tourniquet.

Most of us learned a few things about tourniquets, which is unfortunately still be taught by uninformed trainers who have not updated their training. We learned that tourniquets are a tool of last resort, they are applied two inches above the injury (or above the joint), they should be loosened approximately every 20 minutes, and they will result in the loss of the limb. It turns out that EVERY one of those things are wrong!

The two tourniquets that have been battle tested and approved for our military are the CAT and the SOF-T tourniquets. There are other commercially available tourniquets, some likely very good, and some there are useless. Stick with the SOF-T or CAT and you will be good. Application is easy and can be done by a trained person in about 30 seconds, even on themselves.

Lacking commercial tourniquets, improvised tourniquets can be made using a non-stretchable cloth and a windlass. Though less comfortable for the patient, and more time consuming to apply, they will accomplish the objective of stopping the bleeding.

Any bleeding which direct pressure can stop can be treated with a compression bandage. The advantage is that a patient can be treated quickly and stabilized allowing the care giver to move on to other victims. These are perfect for wounds which are bleeding, but don’t require a tourniquet.

Chest wounds can result in a collapsed lung. Air inside the chest cavity, but outside the lung, can prevent the lung from properly inflating. As more air becomes trapped, less space is available for the lung. Left untreated this pressure can result in increased pressure on the lungs and heart causing breathing and heartbeat to become faster and shallower until death. This is a tension pneumothorax.

Using chest seals to prevent air from entering the chest cavity through holes prevents/delays the onset of tension pneumothorax. Many commercial options are available. AED pads also work well.

Blast and knife injuries can be devastating. Our class covers how to stuff wound cavities and the use of hemostatic agents.

In just a few hours participants will gain the knowledge and hands on training to prioritize treatment of multiple victims. They will know when, why and how to treat the trauma injuries most likely to result in death.

For more information on various commercial trauma kits or to scheduling a class for your school, church or business, contact Joe Eaton via email at Joe@FASTERSavesLives.org or visit us on the web at www.FasterSavesLives.org.

Jim Irvine is the Buckeye Firearms Foundation President, BFA PAC Chairman and recipient of the NRA-ILA's 2011 “Jay M. Littlefield Volunteer of the Year Award,” the CCRKBA's 2012 “Gun Rights Defender of the Year Award,” and the SAF's 2015 “Defender of Freedom Award.“

WEWS (Cleveland ABC) is reporting that three Coshocton County school districts may soon arm staff members with guns to preemptively protect students in the event of an active shooter situation. 

From the article:

River View Local Schools, the Coshocton County Career Center and Coshocton City Schools have been working with the county sheriff's department to train staff members and implement policies for them to carry firearms in the schools while class is in session, according to reports from the sheriff's office. 

“Our number one priority is student safety, and we must be prepared to respond immediately to active shooter situations,” said Coshocton City Schools Superintendent David Hire. “The extensive and on-going training will ensure that we are ready for any such emergency, and we will not have to wait for additional first responders in the event of a critical situation. It is unfortunate that we have to consider these types of options to protect our students and staff, but the reality is that we must be prepared.”

Several staff members from each district volunteered to be trained and licensed to carry firearms, said officials from the sheriff's department. The employees, whose identities have been withheld by authorities, were required to go through conceal and carry classes with the intention of training them to potentially carry a gun in a school setting. 

Following the conceal and carry training, the staff members participated in the FASTER (Faculty/Administrator Safety Training & Emergency Response) training. Each staff member was required to pass a qualification test and sheriff's officials say ongoing training through the sheriff's office will be mandatory in order for them to be permitted to carry a gun in school. 

A press release from the office of Coshocton Co. Sheriff Tim Rogers:

The FASTER program was developed as a common sense response to the horrific murders at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012. While others looked at this tragedy as an excuse to push for more restrictions on honest gunowners or to discuss mental health and other secondary issues, the board of directors at the Buckeye Firearms Foundation decided to step away from the circular debate and focus on solutions. The solution they found was a 30 hour training program developed by John Benner at Tactical Defense Institute.

The program was based on the ‘Active Killer’ training Mr. Benner had been providing to the National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO) and others for over a decade. The training includes the knowledge and skills needed to effectively stop a threat along with the crisis management and emergency medical skills needed to handle the aftermath and continue saving lives while waiting on outside assistance to arrive.

What started in early 2013 as a pilot program for 24 teachers and administrators from schools across Ohio has grown into a multi-year curriculum with attendees from Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Colorado, Tennessee, Pennsylvania and Illinois. Before the initial class of 24 could be completed we had received requests from over 1000 others wanting to participate in the FASTER program.

With the large number of schools looking to have armed staff on the premises, another $100,000 was earmarked to provide another 4 classes at absolutely no cost to the schools. We also expanded to a second venue provided by the Chris Cerino Training Group in northern Ohio. The Buckeye Firearms Foundation was determined to make sure that budget and schedule/travel issues would not prevent schools from obtaining the best available training for any staff who would be armed in Ohio’s schools.

By the end of 2013 it was clear that the FASTER program could not just be a one-and-done type of event. The need and the demand was simply too strong and many schools simply could not do it on their own. For 2014 the Foundation board of directors committed another $125,000 to provide training for another 125 teachers and administrators, this time not only from Ohio, but from other states where the desire to duplicate the FASTER program was strong.

In 2014 we funded the first ‘Level 2′ FASTER class. This class was only available to staff who had previously completed the initial 3 days FASTER training and who had already been carrying in the schools. This pilot class of dedicated teachers and administrators were also the first to receive at no cost to them, emergency trauma kits providing the supplies they would need to treat the most likely causes of death in any violent event or other traumatic school emergency.

Also during 2014, the Buckeye Firearms Foundation announced another initiative to get these life saving supplies into all Ohio schools. In November John Benner and foundation president Jim Irvine were invited to present on the FASTER program at the Ohio School Board Association’s (OSBA) capital conference and trade show in Columbus Ohio. This conference is one of the largest in the country and was attended by over 9,000 Ohio school board members.

The FASTER program started 2015 with a budget for a total of five classes with another 125 teachers and staff. For the first time every FASTER participant would receive a classroom trauma kit valued at $75.00.

We also started seeing school districts moving ahead of the FASTER program all on their own.

One Ohio district contacted us and purchased $5,000 worth of emergency trauma kits so they would have a “facility kit” for every building in their district. For his Eagle Project, a Boy Scout in northwest Ohio is raising funds to install a trauma kit in every classroom of his local school, and to provide the teachers with training needed to use the kits. Still other districts who have been protecting student with firearms for three years began working together with local law enforcement and emergency medical staff and started looking for combined training as a group specifically for their own district.

This localized training quickly coalesced into what is now a third level of training which the FASTER program provides. This training provides active killer/mindset and emergency medical training to all other teachers, staff and local emergency personnel in districts which have armed staff. The training will then incorporate all the persons who will be present during an emergency into the learning scenarios and force-on-force activities.

There have been weeks when 2-3 districts contacted us seeking training and assistance on how to authorize staff to be armed in their schools. Many of those districts have since made the decision to authorize staff to carry firearms. 

At this point, it is anyone’s guess what 2017 will hold for this leading edge program but we need your help. First we need funding. If you or a business you know of would like to fund any portion, large or small of this program, please contact us via the http://www.FASTERSavesLives.org website. The past three years have all been funded by private individual donations, but that alone will not support this program going forward.

If your school has staff who want to be considered for this training program, use the ‘Apply for FREE Training’ link on the website. If you have questions or concerns on how to implement armed staff in your district and would like to discuss or have us present to your school board, contact us, we will travel anywhere to provide information and assistance. Making Ohio schools safer should not be controversial. We are here to help administrators understand violence and be better prepared to prevent it when possible, and limit the loss of innocent lives when it happens.

Chad D. Baus is the Buckeye Firearms Association Secretary, BFA PAC Vice Chairman, and an NRA-certified firearms instructor. He is the editor of BuckeyeFirearms.org, which received the Outdoor Writers of Ohio 2013 Supporting Member Award for Best Website.

Joe Eaton volunteers as Buckeye Firearms Association's Treasurer and as Program Director for Buckeye Firearms Foundation's FASTER Saves Lives school safety program.